Admin > Dev App Testing

New Gun and Stamina System Testing

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Richard LeMoon:
Spire is more fun. I like the changes. Feels better off in a fight, but still an easy ship to kill.

Minotaur... Well, everyone I was in matches with agreed that it only started feeling a little effective once we had two on a Galleon. Even then, it's utility and damage were mostly underwhelming. It had very little effect on most ships. The only ship that was really effected was the Goldfish, which also could not use the gun very well. It was mostly described as "Somewhat of a nuisance, but not threatening." Gunners felt like they were not really doing anything for the most part. Pilots said it was easy to compensate for. Galleon pilots asked if it was being used yet. It only started to show a little promise when used with Greased rounds close range against a Goldfish.

My thoughts are to double the clip size and make it shoot faster. Change one of the damage types to Impact.

Stamina is.... unnecessary complexity. This game is already quite complex to learn. Adding another level of skill to master is only going to hurt gameplay. It is really just another push button tool that is activated by pushing a completely different button than the rest of the tools. We are getting into feature bloat territory. All of these effects could easily be achieved with tools, with the exception of engineer stamina making you run faster... which we will get to.

First off, the stamina bar is massive and annoying. I was just told a few months ago that you did not want to add any more UI elements because it was already too cluttered. Then the hull was added... then this thing.

Pilot stamina.... silly in the extreme. It makes no sense at all as it is. You want a supercharged effect? Make a helm tool for it. Put all the bonus stuff on that tool, and make it last a few seconds after release. Most new pilots would use it a 'easy mode'. More advanced pilots would use it to boost ship performance. Other would not use it at all and stick to other tactics.

Engineer stamina... unanimously described as mostly useless. Movement is so buggy that you just get stuck in new and interesting places. What is desired is faster hits for rebuilding and somehow improving repair. But really, not needed at all.  The engineer game is already pretty balanced.

Gunner stamina... where to start? Actually, just no. Out of all of the class buffs, I dislike this one the most. Moving fast is one thing, but ripping the guns off the mounts because your character yells "Yahooooooo!"? What? I don't even know what to say. I mean, I though you were working on ammo types to do that type of thing. Binding it to a moment of passion that ONLY gunners have makes no sense. You want gunners to be more useful, then make the ammos that do these things. Make arc shifting ammo. Standard ammo that allows you to shift the gun right, left, down, or up at the expense of the other directions. Make sitting in the seat reload the gun faster by default, or other bonuses for not getting out of the gunner seat. Progressively more steady shots, faster gun movement, whatever. Just reward the person staying on the gun for being on the gun. And for the love of Odin's right nipple, don't make the buff hammer increase DPS in any way. That alone would get rid if half the gungineers.

Finally, don't make anything class specific. This is really... jarring to a game that always prided itself on the equality of the characters. Especially in the 'magicy spell' feeling way this is.

Capture points... The changes seemed to make little difference in the two KotH maps. They were a little (sometimes a lot) confusing on the CK maps. Half the time we could not tell if someone was blocking, or we were just not on the point. A Squid hid under a point at one time, and I spent about a minute trying to 'find' where the new capture zone was. A visual indication of whether your ship is on the point or not would be greatly helpful. A small icon next to the score or something similar.

In conclusion, I like the ship changes, but really think everything could be sped up some, including gun speeds. No stamina needed. Just make it faster. Don't implement stamina in any way, and go back to the ammos we were helping develop. I saw a lot of promise there. And make the capture points more clear as to what is actually happening.

Caprontos:
I only really played engineer in actual games but from the few matches I had time to play + general messing around in the dev app pre-testing... Also I am not entirely against stamina (but I'm not against it being scraped exactly either).. I am against it .. in its current form..


I feel the value of engineers stamina is.. about as expected (not super useful) but it is also the only one done well (ie feels kinda balanced)..

It runs out now pretty fast.. So its only really useable/useful during times you need to rebuild more stuff.. assuming those parts are far apart.. Ie.. mostly the goldfish and galleon.. not so much other ships.. maybe spire.

Here is my suggestion for changing stamina..

For gunner tie gun ark changes to the guns.. If a gun cannot aim down normally - it can't aim down with staminia..

All arks are % increased based off the normal arks of a gun - this way the gunner isn't making the gun turn in extremely unnatural ways (and extremely unbalanced ways).. I do not think this change needs to be so drastic as it is now.. (Someone suggested elsewhere it could deal dmg to the gun while out of ark, I like that addition).

For pilot tie it to pilot tools... So rather then just getting blanket increases all around it buffs the tool use.. so If you use stamina when your using claw, the claw turns you faster.. or if you use it during moonshine - moonshine is faster...

This way pilot tools still are just as important as now.. and stamina is just an additional buff to those.. and it should be more situational not all the time like it felt now (I didn't pilot though so idk how fast its actually running out but I've seen the effects a lot during the matches so it seemed like it can be used a lot)..


In general I think if its tied in to the current game mechanics more like this.. rather then just being thrown over top it - it would fit better over all..


Engineer stamina maybe fine as is with no additions.. but that's hard to say till we see what the final gunner and pilot  boosts are and do. If gunner and pilot enables ships to die much faster then normal via reload, then engineers would need a counter to make it feel balanced..  I don't think I like having to use stamina at the right times to counter someone else using it.. That doesn't sound very fun to me.

I do worry stamina is going to drive a larger wedge between "new player" and "old player".. just because it gives older players that much more edge over new ones (when already have a bit to much..).. and that edge use to stomp them makes them not enjoy the game.. and if they aren't having fun then .. they won't stay around..

Kamoba:
Although I've noticed the new stamina has been nerfed, it is still too much.
The UI is huge and I prefered the tiny box.
The engine particles from pilot stamina is...... ****ing horrible. There is no reason beyond time travellers replacing the engines with plasma launchers! Those particles have to go.. The engineer jumping further than a kangaroo on steroids and speed is bad enough but those.engine particles are awful and you may as well turn guns into a space based Sci-Fi if you're going to ruin the current look.of the game in such a way.

I can not stress enough this point: The majority of your dedicated players who have been here a long time and want to stay here a long time, are a niche market which you have supplied to very well with only a few hiccups....
Once you start destroying that with sci-fi looks over the top physic breaking mechanics and super powers that only appeal to the player base which logs in once, and rage quits after loosing once, you will loose your existing player base, and loose the dedicated players which keep this game alive.

Stamina needs nerfing still on every point, it should be a small boost and not an immersion breaking balance breaking feature which will only add extra search tags for the wrong target audience.
The stamina made one baby step forward and sooo many backwards.

Honestly i say scrap it or make it a hundredth of what it is now.
Otherwise the game becomes Tabula Rasa... (one final jump of patches before a sudden unwelcome disappearance.)

Patched Wizard:
Ships
I'm okay with the ship adjustments to this point. For the most part the changes were rather minor and I didn't feel they broke the game or its systems. I didn't notice a sizeable difference in the Spire and Pyramidion, and I take that as a good thing.
However, as a full time Squid/Goldfish pilot I am against the health increase in the Squid. I firmly believe that for the squid to be a viable choice and balanced, it needs to be able to outmanoeuvre every other ship but the consequences of any mistake must be severe and immediate. I've always seen the Squid as the Golden Gun; a terrifying weapon in the right hands but as deadly to its user as much as it is to its enemy. Newer players should be afraid of flying the Squid and experienced players should be flawless in their execution.
But if you're determined to add some health to the Squid I would prefer it if you added it to the armour instead of the hull. This way at least the Squid will still go down quickly unless the pilot and main engineer are conscious of this weakness.

With the incoming Squid mobility buffs I feel we're finally starting to get to a point of tactical balance for each role. As i've understood the roles, the Goldfish is the jack-of-all-trades but a master of none, the Junker is a light Galleon but lacking the Galleon's stoping power and endurance, the Squid is a knife in the dark but useless in an open brawl, the Galleon is the king of control but slow to a fault, the Pyramidion is a drag racer but in every sense of the word, and the Spire and Mobula are cannons but made of glass and vapour.
The Squid needs to be difficult to fly for the sake of the game's tactical balance. Otherwise with a more forgiving health increase player's will start complaining about the Squid being too OP. Then to not appear as reversing your stance, you'll inevitably increase each ship's turning speed to compensate for this. And then we'll end up exactly where we are at this point, with a Squid that is easily countered by Pyramidions that are able to turn on a dime and Goldfish that are fill the role of the Squid better than the Squid itself.


Minotaur
The potential in this new weapon is incredibly exciting. Flying the Goldfish I purposely got pinned down by two Minotaurs on a Galleon and while it was difficult to control, I wasn't in any major threat due to the low damage of the cannons. However, the gun's utility by itself is underpowered and also with a limited effectiveness on the Goldfish only. At this stage the gun has no utility on a Spire or Goldfish. I feel that an individual cannon should be able to pin down/reposition any ship (with the exception of the Galleon) with an experienced gunner but that ship should have the opportunity to escape so there is no frustration. I would suggest that the gun is buffed but handicapped with a long reload time (the Hwacha timing is a good starting point) so that a ship can escape from the Minotaur's arcs.
The question is what happens when a Galleon is equipped with two Minotaurs? I feel that to mitigate any potential problems you need to keep the Minotaur ineffective at dealing out damage. With this you can, in theory, keep a single ship locked down with one gunner alternating between both cannons during the reload cycle but you'd be unable to kill said ship. This scenario is no different from the current double Hwacha load-out that some crews use to disable a single ship and hold them in place while their team fights elsewhere.


Capture the Point Logic
Interesting ideas, didn't get to test them out completely but I think there is potential. But I do stress that there does need to be a clear indication that you know that it is your ship that is on the point and not just your allies. Plenty of games have been confusing due to a new pilot that doesn't know if they're on the point or not or even where the point is.


Stamina
I'm going to be brutally honest here: SCRAP IT

This is a terrible solution especially when simple fixes exist. This is a solution that will break the game and ruin all the game's current philosophies of class balance, ship roles, and strategic engagements.

This is an unwanted layer of gameplay complexity, it's thematically out of place, and in the end it won't solve any of the issues that it sets out to do but instead it will create a plethora of new problems. For example, already we've found that if you have stamina and apply it as you're being rammed you don't get any damage from the ram until the stamina wears off. This is ridiculous when I can play chicken with my Mobula, full speed and with kerosine, against a moonshining Galleon and suffered no hull or amour damage.

A pilot already has tools that they can utilise but if you want them to be faster then lower the penalties or increase the effects. An engineer already spends most of their time stuck in the balloon or hull so they don't need to spend time flying off the ship too. And to make the gunner viable all you need to do is add an ammo that fires normal ammo but allows the gunner to go beyond a gun's standard axis of fire or you could add a engineer tool that would have the same arc increasing effect but since the engineers already have their core load-outs it would make sense for a gunner to specialise and bring the tool instead. All of these are immediate solutions that don't take long to balance and would add to the game in a more meaningful way than this broken concept.

I don't mean to insult who ever came up with this idea but the stamina system is a bad idea and for the sake of the game, the players, and the dev team: SCRAP IT

Kamoba:

--- Quote from: Patched Wizard on February 08, 2015, 10:38:04 am ---Ships
I'm okay with the ship adjustments to this point. For the most part the changes were rather minor and I didn't feel they broke the game or its systems. I didn't notice a sizeable difference in the Spire and Pyramidion, and I take that as a good thing.
However, as a full time Squid/Goldfish pilot I am against the health increase in the Squid. I firmly believe that for the squid to be a viable choice and balanced, it needs to be able to outmanoeuvre every other ship but the consequences of any mistake must be severe and immediate. I've always seen the Squid as the Golden Gun; a terrifying weapon in the right hands but as deadly to its user as much as it is to its enemy. Newer players should be afraid of flying the Squid and experienced players should be flawless in their execution.
But if you're determined to add some health to the Squid I would prefer it if you added it to the armour instead of the hull. This way at least the Squid will still go down quickly unless the pilot and main engineer are conscious of this weakness.

With the incoming Squid mobility buffs I feel we're finally starting to get to a point of tactical balance for each role. As i've understood the roles, the Goldfish is the jack-of-all-trades but a master of none, the Junker is a light Galleon but lacking the Galleon's stoping power and endurance, the Squid is a knife in the dark but useless in an open brawl, the Galleon is the king of control but slow to a fault, the Pyramidion is a drag racer but in every sense of the word, and the Spire and Mobula are cannons but made of glass and vapour.
The Squid needs to be difficult to fly for the sake of the game's tactical balance. Otherwise with a more forgiving health increase player's will start complaining about the Squid being too OP. Then to not appear as reversing your stance, you'll inevitably increase each ship's turning speed to compensate for this. And then we'll end up exactly where we are at this point, with a Squid that is easily countered by Pyramidions that are able to turn on a dime and Goldfish that are fill the role of the Squid better than the Squid itself.


Minotaur
The potential in this new weapon is incredibly exciting. Flying the Goldfish I purposely got pinned down by two Minotaurs on a Galleon and while it was difficult to control, I wasn't in any major threat due to the low damage of the cannons. However, the gun's utility by itself is underpowered and also with a limited effectiveness on the Goldfish only. At this stage the gun has no utility on a Spire or Goldfish. I feel that an individual cannon should be able to pin down/reposition any ship (with the exception of the Galleon) with an experienced gunner but that ship should have the opportunity to escape so there is no frustration. I would suggest that the gun is buffed but handicapped with a long reload time (the Hwacha timing is a good starting point) so that a ship can escape from the Minotaur's arcs.
The question is what happens when a Galleon is equipped with two Minotaurs? I feel that to mitigate any potential problems you need to keep the Minotaur ineffective at dealing out damage. With this you can, in theory, keep a single ship locked down with one gunner alternating between both cannons during the reload cycle but you'd be unable to kill said ship. This scenario is no different from the current double Hwacha load-out that some crews use to disable a single ship and hold them in place while their team fights elsewhere.


Capture the Point Logic
Interesting ideas, didn't get to test them out completely but I think there is potential. But I do stress that there does need to be a clear indication that you know that it is your ship that is on the point and not just your allies. Plenty of games have been confusing due to a new pilot that doesn't know if they're on the point or not or even where the point is.


Stamina
I'm going to be brutally honest here: SCRAP IT

This is a terrible solution especially when simple fixes exist. This is a solution that will break the game and ruin all the game's current philosophies of class balance, ship roles, and strategic engagements.

This is an unwanted layer of gameplay complexity, it's thematically out of place, and in the end it won't solve any of the issues that it sets out to do but instead it will create a plethora of new problems. For example, already we've found that if you have stamina and apply it as you're being rammed you don't get any damage from the ram until the stamina wears off. This is ridiculous when I can play chicken with my Mobula, full speed and with kerosine, against a moonshining Galleon and suffered no hull or amour damage.

A pilot already has tools that they can utilise but if you want them to be faster then lower the penalties or increase the effects. An engineer already spends most of their time stuck in the balloon or hull so they don't need to spend time flying off the ship too. And to make the gunner viable all you need to do is add an ammo that fires normal ammo but allows the gunner to go beyond a gun's standard axis of fire or you could add a engineer tool that would have the same arc increasing effect but since the engineers already have their core load-outs it would make sense for a gunner to specialise and bring the tool instead. All of these are immediate solutions that don't take long to balance and would add to the game in a more meaningful way than this broken concept.

I don't mean to insult who ever came up with this idea but the stamina system is a bad idea and for the sake of the game, the players, and the dev team: SCRAP IT

--- End quote ---

#SaynotoStaminaofIcarus
And
#Squidsoficarusincoming!

I agree on all the above points, the squid does not need more perma hull, it either needs more armour (which is a balance in itself due to rebuild time) or just the mobility boost.

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